TRENTON — After 34 years of publicly sharing their deepest feelings and most painful experiences, adoption activists celebrated today as Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill that will enable them to obtain their original birth records, beginning in 2017.

As it turns out, the issue was personal for the governor too.

Three years ago, Catholic and anti-abortion rights leaders convinced Christie to veto the legislation because they said it would harm mothers who gave their babies up for adoption and wanted to remain anonymous. But he said the "extremely persistent" yet "respectful" advocates for the bill wouldn’t give up, and asked him to consider the human rights of the adoptee.

Christie today revealed he sought advice from his sister, Dawn, who was 2 when his parents adopted her. Christie was 11 and his brother, Todd, was 9 at the time.

"I often was uncomfortable with discussing this publicly because I had to identify my sister as adopted. You see, in our family, once she joined us 4th of July weekend in 1973, she was my sister, not my adopted sister," Christie told a group of adoption rights advocates who gathered outside the Statehouse for the bill signing ceremony. "And for people who. . .referred to her as my adopted sister, we would always stop them short. She's our sister."

"The issue is even more complicated for her,” Christie added. “The father of her four children is also adopted. The lack of knowledge and information they can pass on to their own children has been a cause of great concern and stress for them over the years.”

The new law requires birth mothers to complete a form identifying medical conditions they and other family members had suffered, alerting adoptees to what kinds of illnesses they may someday face.

Christie said when he asked his sister, a private person, if he could share their family's story to help the public understand the issue, she replied: “ 'I am proud of what Mom and Dad did, and if you talk about it to help get to the right solution about this, then go ahead.' "

The governor said the law achieves "our intended goals of protecting and respecting the interests of all of the people involved in the adoption process, while at the same time making sure that the miracle of adoption -- the miracle that was experienced by my own family and is still being experienced by us today, is available to as many people in New Jersey who have an open heart and a willingness to share their home and their lives with a new member of the family."

He said the compromise made with the bill’s prime sponsors -- including Sens. Diane Allen (R-Burlington) and Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex) -- struck the right balance "by preserving privacy options for birth parents by allowing them to select a preference for contact -- either through direct contact, contact through a confidential intermediary, or access to medical records only with continued privacy."

Adopted people won't be able to apply to the state health department for their birth certificates until Jan. 1, 2017 under the new law. The lag time gives the law's opponents and proponents ample time to educate birth parents about their privacy rights and submit a yet-to-be-designed contact preference form to the state stating their wishes.

A birth parent who requests no contact will be encouraged to provide the Health Department with updated family information every 10 years until age 40, and once every five years after that.

For adoptions finalized after Aug. 1, 2015, birth certificates would be available in their entirety. Birth parents would be able to submit a form indicating their preference, according to the legislation (S873).

Patrick Brannigan, executive director of the New Jersey Catholic Conference, which opposed the legislation, issued a statement today saying the media and those involved in adoptions have a "moral obligation" to publicize the law. He said the church and others that provide adoptions should also offer counseling and other services for birth parents who will be affected “by this significant change in law."

"The fear people have about destroying relationships I found over the last 15 years of doing this is not true,” McGee said. “It strengthens relationships and brings them together. . .It's not about replacement. I needed to know because who I am because it made me whole."

Vitale said the law is about treating people equally.

Adopted people "now have an opportunity to know all of the things that someone from a traditional birth family possess, which is not only the knowledge about our medical history but who we are, what our ethnicity is, what our family stories are -- all those stories we tell around the dinner table on Thanksgiving," he said.